Single-Cell Analysis in Cancer

Cancer is a severe disease caused by mutations in the genome accumulated in individual cells. Single-cell analysis techniques offer the opportunity to gain unprecedented insights into cellular organs and tissues. Multicellular organisms consist of different cell types that give rise to a multitude of organs and tissues with distinct functions. Lineage inference can be a challenging task, especially when multiple differentiation trajectories from a common progenitor pool towards several different mature cell types exist. The rapid progress of single-cell sequencing techniques has led to continuously growing interest in investigating biological systems on a single-cell basis and has given rise to international efforts to map all human cell types to create a human cell atlas. The development of single-cell sequencing technologies offers unprecedented resolution in tumour phylogeny reconstruction. Single-cell sequencing offers unprecedented resolution for assessing tumour heterogeneity and evolution. However, single-cell sequencing data have elevated noise levels, such that tailored analysis tools are required.